The energy consumption of data centers has dramatically increased in recent years, primarily because of the massive computing demands driven essentially by every sector of the economy, ranging from accelerating online sales in the retail business to banking services in the financial industry. A study estimated the total U.S. DC energy consumption in the year 2005 to be approximately 1.2% of the total U.S. consumption (up by 15% from the year 2000). See, for example, “EPA Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency” Public Law 109-431, United States Code, Aug. 2, 2007.
In order to improve data center energy efficiency, it is important to be able to accurately assess the temperature distributions with the data center. That way cooling systems can be effectively implemented with greater efficiency. Further, changing conditions within the data center make it desirable to be able to determine the temperature distributions in a timely manner, in order to continually maintain an efficient cooling operation within the data center.
Thus, techniques for real-time modeling temperature distributions would be desirable.